For the past several years I've endured a super incubator that wasn't set up as a hatcher.The days of my beloved Brinsea are gone here so now I'm about to see if Humidaire incubators are really all they are made out to be.Problem is again with this incubator,it cannot be set up to hatch peachicks in because the entire incubator is hinged in the middle to be "rocked" back or forward to turn the eggs.
It is a novel approach to aiding a slow tedious process 2-3 times each day but at least the Brinsea has a timer that automatically turned the trays as often as you wanted them to.So now with less than 2 weeks away before my Merlot hatch-a-long gets under way here I've decided to build my own hatcher the way one should be set up for peachicks.
A couple of issues I always had to overcome was hatched peachicks that get intermingled with other hatched chicks when I'm not here to see exactly which chick came from which egg.Granted BSSP and IB are easy to tell once hatched but when you have Midnight,IB,Purple,BSSP,Opal and Purple birds that all are B/S,,sometimes if several hatches within a very short time frame it's impossible to know which yellow chick came from which egg,even tho I mark each egg. Once I had to run into town and had 4 peachicks that was pipped but when I came home 2 hours later all 4 was out and fluffy dry and then it was a complete mess.Had to wait several months on 3 chicks to know who was who.
In the bottom of my Brinsea I made a tic-tac-toe cardboard divider and moved like eggs into same compartments but the sides of the cardboard walls could only be about 4" high and soon it was apparent that Peachicks likes to get together in groups at hatchtime and could easily get over those short sides.Also in the Brinsea if I needed to jack the humidity for the last few days,all eggs inside the bator were subjected to this rise in rh.
Another problem is why in a $1200 plus priced incubator can't they install a $5 light that you can turn on to see whats going on? Sure there is a clear door to see thru but you cannot see what's going on in the rear of the trays,nor the bottom of the incubator that is set aside for a hatching tray.Open the door,,pull the tray out and then investigate. So with these issues always missed by the big incubator manufacturers I've decided to once again build something that if it doesn't work it's my own fault.
This may take a few nights to complete so updates will be forthcoming when I do more.I want 3-4 days of run time to tweak it before my first viable egg of the season goes inside which will be from my Taupe pen.
It is a novel approach to aiding a slow tedious process 2-3 times each day but at least the Brinsea has a timer that automatically turned the trays as often as you wanted them to.So now with less than 2 weeks away before my Merlot hatch-a-long gets under way here I've decided to build my own hatcher the way one should be set up for peachicks.
A couple of issues I always had to overcome was hatched peachicks that get intermingled with other hatched chicks when I'm not here to see exactly which chick came from which egg.Granted BSSP and IB are easy to tell once hatched but when you have Midnight,IB,Purple,BSSP,Opal and Purple birds that all are B/S,,sometimes if several hatches within a very short time frame it's impossible to know which yellow chick came from which egg,even tho I mark each egg. Once I had to run into town and had 4 peachicks that was pipped but when I came home 2 hours later all 4 was out and fluffy dry and then it was a complete mess.Had to wait several months on 3 chicks to know who was who.
In the bottom of my Brinsea I made a tic-tac-toe cardboard divider and moved like eggs into same compartments but the sides of the cardboard walls could only be about 4" high and soon it was apparent that Peachicks likes to get together in groups at hatchtime and could easily get over those short sides.Also in the Brinsea if I needed to jack the humidity for the last few days,all eggs inside the bator were subjected to this rise in rh.
Another problem is why in a $1200 plus priced incubator can't they install a $5 light that you can turn on to see whats going on? Sure there is a clear door to see thru but you cannot see what's going on in the rear of the trays,nor the bottom of the incubator that is set aside for a hatching tray.Open the door,,pull the tray out and then investigate. So with these issues always missed by the big incubator manufacturers I've decided to once again build something that if it doesn't work it's my own fault.
This may take a few nights to complete so updates will be forthcoming when I do more.I want 3-4 days of run time to tweak it before my first viable egg of the season goes inside which will be from my Taupe pen.
